Aaron Gwin won a thrilling Mont Sainte Anne World Cup final in Canada by 1.3 seconds from Greg Minnaar and Danny Hart.
Whoa what a super exciting race! You can watch the replay here if you missed it.
Neko Mulally had a massive stack over the big hip. Hope he’s okay. Loads of chains snapped including Brendan Fairclough’s and Mick Hannah’s. Matti Lehikoinen had a big smash. Ropelato was flying until ne had a big wobble in the rocks.
Here’s the TWR words:
For the second year in a row, Aaron Gwin has won the World Cup at Mont-Sainte-Anne, Canada, the track where he made his dramatic debut in 2008. Team mate Justin Leov scored his first top 10 of the year after qualifying 5th, and Neko Mulally walks away from a horrific crash that had his family and the team looking on with great concern.
Certainly a day of action and drama for the team, but there is little that can be taken away from Aaron Gwin in yet another display or pure talent and determination on one of the world’s toughest courses. Last year both he and main rival Greg Minnaar crashed in their final runs, but Aaron’s was less costly in time. This year a couple of small errors saw his opening leading of 2.9secs whittled down to 1.3secs at the finish line, but enough to take his 3rd win of the season, and extend his World Cup lead over Greg Minnaar to 135 points.
Interestingly in the last 11 World Cups (7 in 2011 and 4 so far this year) there have only been two winners, Aaron with 8 and Greg with 3. Historically, Aaron now holds the record for the best percentage winning streak having won 8 of 11 consecutive races (previous best was Nicolas Vouilloz with 7 from 10 consecutive).
Aaron said: “It’s always special to win a World Cup but this venue holds a special place in my heart. The pressure was on today as I knew Greg would step it up and he’s had his fair share of success over the years here. The course has some sections which feel almost designed for me, I love them, and I know if I hadn’t made those two small errors in the lower half of the course I would have scored a better time, but hey, I’ll take it!”
For Justin it was great to have the speed here this week and after qualifying 5th he was sure he could score his best result of the 2012 World Cup season, ideally a podium. His race run was for the most part going really well, especially the first half, but then in a couple of sections Justin lost a little time by riding conservatively.
Justin said: “Moving on up, which is always a good feeling, my rank is now 11th overall so that’s good. I just felt in a couple of sections that I was just doing enough to get through them rather than pinning it, but what I’ve learned this week I’ll take to Windham .”
Neko Mulally, after qualifying in a solid 17th place was on target to have another top 20 result when he had a terrible crash caught live on the broadcast. Fortunately we can report that after on site treatment by the medical staff, Neko has walked away without broken bones, and is suffering a mild concussion. He will be under observation for the next 48hrs but is expected to make a speedy recovery.
Aaron Gwin Gwinning again. Photo: Sebastian Schieck.
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